Such prodigality was hardly believable.
To add to her contentment, the Factor was cunningly kind.
He had buried one wife, and he knew how to drive with a slack rein that went firm only on occasion, and then went very firm.
“Lit-lit is boss of this place,” he announced significantly at the table the morning after the wedding.
“What she says goes.
Understand?”
And McLean and McTavish understood.
Also, they knew that the Factor had a heavy hand.
But Lit-lit did not take advantage.
Taking a leaf from the book of her husband, she at once assumed charge of his own growing sons, giving them added comforts and a measure of freedom like to that which he gave her.
The two sons were loud in the praise of their new mother; McLean and McTavish lifted their voices; and the Factor bragged of the joys of matrimony till the story of her good behaviour and her husband’s satisfaction became the property of all the dwellers in the Sin Rock district.
Whereupon Snettishane, with visions of his incalculable interest keeping him awake of nights, thought it time to bestir himself.
On the tenth night of her wedded life Lit-lit was awakened by the croaking of a raven, and she knew that Snettishane was waiting for her by the river bank.
In her great happiness she had forgotten her pact, and now it came back to her with behind it all the childish terror of her father.
For a time she lay in fear and trembling, loath to go, afraid to stay.
But in the end the Factor won the silent victory, and his kindness plus his great muscles and square jaw, nerved her to disregard Snettishane’s call.
But in the morning she arose very much afraid, and went about her duties in momentary fear of her father’s coming.
As the day wore along, however, she began to recover her spirits.
John Fox, soundly berating McLean and McTavish for some petty dereliction of duty, helped her to pluck up courage.
She tried not to let him go out of her sight, and when she followed him into the huge cache and saw him twirling and tossing great bales around as though they were feather pillows, she felt strengthened in her disobedience to her father.
Also (it was her first visit to the warehouse, and Sin Rock was the chief distributing point to several chains of lesser posts), she was astounded at the endlessness of the wealth there stored away.
This sight and the picture in her mind’s eye of the bare lodge of Snettishane, put all doubts at rest.
Yet she capped her conviction by a brief word with one of her step-sons.
“White daddy good?” was what she asked, and the boy answered that his father was the best man he had ever known.
That night the raven croaked again.
On the night following the croaking was more persistent.
It awoke the Factor, who tossed restlessly for a while.
Then he said aloud, “Damn that raven,” and Lit-lit laughed quietly under the blankets.
In the morning, bright and early, Snettishane put in an ominous appearance and was set to breakfast in the kitchen with Wanidani.
He refused “squaw food,” and a little later bearded his son-in-law in the store where the trading was done.
Having learned, he said, that his daughter was such a jewel, he had come for more blankets, more tobacco, and more guns—especially more guns.
He had certainly been cheated in her price, he held, and he had come for justice.
But the Factor had neither blankets nor justice to spare.
Whereupon he was informed that Snettishane had seen the missionary at Three Forks, who had notified him that such marriages were not made in heaven, and that it was his father’s duty to demand his daughter back.
“I am good Christian man now,” Snettishane concluded. “I want my Lit-lit to go to heaven.”
The Factor’s reply was short and to the point; for he directed his father-in-law to go to the heavenly antipodes, and by the scruff of the neck and the slack of the blanket propelled him on that trail as far as the door.
But Snettishane sneaked around and in by the kitchen, cornering Lit-lit in the great living-room of the Fort.
“Mayhap thou didst sleep over-sound last night when I called by the river bank,” he began, glowering darkly.
“Nay, I was awake and heard.”
Her heart was beating as though it would choke her, but she went on steadily, “And the night before I was awake and heard, and yet again the night before.”
And thereat, out of her great happiness and out of the fear that it might be taken from her, she launched into an original and glowing address upon the status and rights of woman—the first new-woman lecture delivered north of Fifty-three.
But it fell on unheeding ears. Snettishane was still in the dark ages.
As she paused for breath, he said threateningly, “To-night I shall call again like the raven.”
At this moment the Factor entered the room and again helped Snettishane on his way to the heavenly antipodes.
That night the raven croaked more persistently than ever.
Lit-lit, who was a light sleeper, heard and smiled.
John Fox tossed restlessly.
Then he awoke and tossed about with greater restlessness.
He grumbled and snorted, swore under his breath and over his breath, and finally flung out of bed.
He groped his way to the great living-room, and from the rack took down a loaded shot-gun—loaded with bird-shot, left therein by the careless McTavish.